“My head is always full of stuff, images just appear and I have to draw them
Asked about the subject of her paintings Kay Ara simply says “my head is always full of stuff, images just appear and I have to draw them”. Citing Instagram as her biggest source of inspiration, this quick witted and restless artist is always on the lookout for possible subjects, piecing together her idiosyncratic tableaux from the visual currency of 75,000 years worth of human made images. Pulling magpie-like all that glitters into her sphere, from Korean ink paintings to minoan sculptures, figures dominate; animal, human or a mixture of both are full of colour and jostling with astonishing vitality. These vibrant works are accompanied by quirky titles that can be witty, silly, naughty, thoughtful or edgy, sometimes referring to contemporary politics, histories of art, everyday occurrences or the people and animals that share Kay’s life. In the same way that Philip Guston drew from both high and low culture Kay Le Seelleur Ara aims to make visible the world as she sees and feels it.